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to get a message to New Winchester? The
Girl’s
radio was carefully gutted. How about making a substitute on the sly, out of spare parts? No, O’Toole was not that kind of a dolt, he would have confiscated the spare parts as well, including even the radar.
    But let’s see. New Winchester was only some thousands of kilometers off. A spark-gap oscillator, powered by the ship’s plant, could send an S.O.S. that far, even allowing for the inverse-square enfeeblement of an unbeamed broadcast. It would not be too hard to construct such an oscillator out of ordinary electrical stuff lying around the engine room. But it would take a while. Would O’Toole let Knud Axel Syrup tinker freely, day after day, in the captive ship? He would not.
    Unless, of course, there was a legitimate reason to tinker. If there was some
other
job to be done, which Knud Axel Syrup could pretend to be doing while actually making a Marconi broadcaster. Only, there were competent engineers among the Erse. It would be strange if one of them, at least, did not inspect the work aboard the
Girl
from time to time. And such a man could not be told that an oscillator was a dreelsprail for the hypewangle camit.
    So. Herr Syrup opened another bottle and recharged his pipe. One thing you must say for the Erse, given a trail of logic to follow, they follow it till the sun freezes over. Having mulled the question in his mind for an hour or two, Herr Syrup concluded that he could only get away with building an oscillator if he was in some place where no Erse engineer would come poking an unwelcome nose. So what was needed was an excuse to—
    Along about midnight, Herr Syrup left his cabin and went into the engine room. Happily humming, he opened up the internal-field compensator which had so badly misbehaved on the trip down. Hm, hm, hm, let us see … yes, the trouble was there, a burned-out field coil, easily replaced … tum-te-tum-te-tum. Herr Syrup installed a coil of impedance calculated to unbalance the circuits. He shorted out two more coils, sprayed a variable condenser lightly with clear plastic,removed a handful of wiring and flushed it down the toilet, and spent an hour opening two big gas-filled rectifier tubes, injecting them with tobacco-juice vapor and resealing them. Having done which, he returned to his bunk, changed into night clothes, and took a copy of Kant’s
Critique
off the shelf to read himself to sleep.
    ‘Kraa, kraa, kraa,’ grumbled Claus. ‘Bloody foolishness, damme.
Pokker! Ungah, ungah
!’

CHAPTER FOUR
    Inquiry in the morning established that the office of the Erse military commander had been set up in a requisitioned loft room downtown, above Miss Thirkell’s Olde Giftie Shoppe. Shuddering his way past a shelf of particularly malignant-looking china dogs, Herr Syrup climbed a circular stair so quaint that he could barely squeeze his way along it. Halfway up, a small round man coming hastily down caromed off his paunch.
    ‘I say!’ exclaimed the small man, adjusting his pince-nez indignantly. He picked up his briefcase. ‘
Would
you mind backing down again and letting me past?’
    ‘Vy don’t you back up?’ asked Herr Syrup in a harsh mood.
    ‘My dear fellow,’ said the small man, ‘the right-of-way in a situation like this has been clearly established by Gooch vs. Torpenhow, Holm Assizes 2098, not to mention—’
    Herr Syrup gave up and retreated. ‘You is a lawyer?’ he asked.
    ‘A solicitor? Yes, I have the honor to be Thwickhammer of Stonefriend, Stonefriend, Thwickhammer, Thwickhammer, Thwickhammer, Thwickhammer, and Stonefriend, of Lincoln’s Inn. My card, sir.’ The little man cocked his head. ‘I say, aren’t you one of the spacemen who arrived yesterday?’
    ‘
Ja
. I vas yust going to see about—’
    ‘Don’t bother, sir, don’t bother. Beasts, that’s all these invaders are, beasts with green tunics. When I heard of your crew’s arrest, I resolved at once that they should not lack for legal